Hola everyone! I’m finally back from Costa Rica. When I arrived home on Wednesday night, Kevin and Cole had a big “Welcome Home” sign attached to the fireplace. Very cute!

I’m feeling a bit like I’ve been sucked up into a whirlwind of excitement now that I’m back with my new book, Animal Lessons, finally out, with prepping to go to the Afterlife Conference in Portland in a couple weeks, and with more and more and more things going on.

BUT there are cool things to share with you! So, today I’m going to share the story of Julie, one of the attendees of my Costa Rica Horse and Soul retreat (and yes, I have permission to share her story!).

Julie is a student at the DM School of Animal Communication. Through her animal communication classes and some private sessions with me, she’s been working on believing in her power and in particular – her strength.

For years, Julie has questioned both her emotional and physical strength. Much of Julie’s work in the school has been focused on changing her belief around her inner power.

In the Horse and Soul workshop, we go through a special experience where a horse chooses the person he/she wants to work with for the week. The horse that chose Julie was named Mr. Big (of Sex and the City fame), and in their first interactions, Mr. Big showed Julie love and kindness, as well as touch.

As the workshop continued though, Mr. Big began to push Julie out of her comfort zone pushing her to move from a nurturing standpoint into one where she had to be the boss.

At first, not believing in her strength, Julie felt unsure and very upset about doing this. She didn’t want to have to be “big” to get Mr. Big to do what she needed him to do – she wanted to get him to move through loving touch, through little nudges.

But Mr. Big had other ideas. He could sense the inner power in Julie – power that she didn’t yet realize she possessed – and eventually brought it out of her during the group’s horseback ride to the waterfall. (Click here to read about my experience with last year this here.)

It was during the ride to the waterfall, that Mr. Big pulled out the big guns. He became unruly and stopped listening to Julie’s soft reprimands when she tried to get him to continue walking and ignore the grass that lined the sides of the path. The longer Julie remained in a passive, small energy, the more grass Mr. Big ate. And the further behind the rest of the group they fell.

Bit by bit, Mr. Big teased BIG ENERGY out of Julie, slowing when she got small, eating when she was unsure, wandering when she felt unconfident – but walking straight ahead when she gave a loud correction and the bigger she held her energy, the better Mr. Big walked.

At the end of the ride, when Julie had been holding her energy big for Mr. Big (perfect name for him right?), Julie said that she realized it’s possible to be big and not harm others. That, in fact, being big allowed her to take care of herself and others better than ever.

We ended the week-long workshop with horse games (oh, how much the horses loved those!). When it was Julie’s turn, she got on Mr. Big and paused for a moment as the music began. The song “Brick House” began to play loudly over the speakers and Julie actually yelled, “This is the most perfect song for me right now!” and this is a picture of her as she said that: